


You Will Be Happy Here

by Numbers



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numbers/pseuds/Numbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She promises and does not weep. Seymour/Yuna. (Expect gratuitous Tidus/Yuna angst as well)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Waves crash.

Water pools around their feet. It gurgles as it explores their ankles, swelling just a second before sucking back. The tide is gentle here, but the sand that has been ripped from beneth swirls around them, insignificant specks of dust that, in this moment, she takes the time to notice.

She takes the time to notice, because suddenly every single thing has weight. Never before has his robe seemed so heavy. Never before has she felt like the silk around her arms might drag her down, down beneath the shore, and suddenly she wonders if, if you can burrow beneath the sand beneath the ocean - will you stay dry? No, she thinks, because water always finds a way to wriggle down between the cracks and soften the core.

Never before has she spent so much time staring at her feet, her head too heavy for her neck to ever support.

Behind them, Mushroom Rock Road rises up. Its teeth and hollow coves and caves graves for the hundreds who have long since died. She wonders if they hate her, if they hate them, if the howling wind is their objection.

Long before her neck can start to crack and her body fall between the sand and sea, she takes the time to look up.

His face is a mess of battlelines. Trees do not grow in the ocean, she reminds herself, and stares at the bark that runs long and hard over his eyes and across his forehead. His lips are broken, cracked, jaded - but it is his eyes that show the wound pooling black like a flower.

"You'll be happy here," she says, and despite the shivering beneath her eyes, despite the quivering that moves on her lips, there is not a single crack in her voice. She clings to her strength, her hands sitting on his upturned arms - his spider-hands clasping her elbows and swathed in the silk that binds her arms. It must be so hard, to hold her up like this. The strain is hidden by the smile he somehow wears (he lies, just like her, just like her), and through it all, she has one too.

"I promise."

It is the softess of movements that mark his distress. He's learned to cry by the tilt of his head, to weep by the glance of an eye, to scream and shout and rant and rail by the tiniest purse of his lips. He's shown her a foreign language that she must trace like the battlescars, but no matter how well she knows the canyons and the crags and the blue, blue rivers - she doesn't understand, in this moment, what it means for him to bow his head and to move his arms back by his sides.

"Goodbye, Lady Yuna."

Must he always be so formal?

She laughs, and plays along.

"Goodbye, Your Grace."

They both bow, break and bend and shape their backs, bringing their arms and hands to curve like opposing rivers, and they bow and she laughs because the space between those never-crossing rivers is just like them. If her hands were to touch in that ancient bow, well, how untidy it would be, how insulting would it be, how frivilous and childish and stupid and how very chastised by the entire world, would she be. And though he'll never understand her laugh - he seems very much aware of how little sense this all makes and he laughs too.

And that is that.

Because now he's not laughing, anymore. And neither is she.

They listen to the wind, and through her two-tone eyes she watches the violent waves crashing in this distance. She feels the water round her ankles, running, pooling, pushing with the tide. He dislodges himself from the sand, and lets himself be pulled away by the sea. His back to her, he lifts his head - and she will never see his face.

She watches as he moves, and not once, not ever, does he turn around.

No matter how long she stares out towards that sea - she could never place a face on him. She could not tell if he dared to let himself finally crack, if those hard worn lines gave way and he split and spilled and cried as he had done for years without telling anyone. Or maybe he didn't let go of that laughter, and maybe - maybe as he ran in to strike against the white winding waves, maybe he was shouting, whooping, laughing a full blown laugh that the howl of the wind never let her hear.

Her beads clack when her delicate fingers run through her hair.

And through it all, she smiles.


	2. Hummingbirds

She should not have come here.

Guadosalam was dead.

The bark felt cool against her finger tips which she brushed gingerly against a tree that writhed and withered and winded. Once, people tended to these trees. Once, roots did not rise out of the ground to trip her. Once, there had been a mysterious and knowledgeable gloom to this place, where the tree-people hung heavy tradition above her head like a noose and judged her every movement. Now there were no judging faces, but trees that ached and whined and groaned as the wood took back what once was its own and its only.

She felt pangs of guilt. Perhaps they should not have been so harsh in their slander of Maester Seymour. Perhaps she should have bit back the truth and speak in the honest lies he had always told her. Perhaps she could have saved the Guado from their own mindless spiralling suicide had she given them some grace and held her tongue.

No.

No, she shook her head. Truth. Spira needed truth. No matter how painful. No matter how tough it was to handle. No matter the uproar - the people needed to know the truth. Only then could sorrow be fought, and only then could this land begin to heal. The Guado would learn, she hoped. They would learn to smile again.

Breathing softly, she made her way through the knotting roots and vines - padding over the overgrowth and down the broken corridors. Stairs rose above her, and she climbed without fear.

She was not afraid.

She was not afraid. Not Afraid. She wanted to whisper the words under her breath - if only to quash the glittering feeling that burned in her stomach. She would not be afraid, because she knew what answer lay beyond the veil of the Farplane.

Stepping through that veil, she saw the black black earth and the wild streams of gold flushed pink on a brilliant sky. Pinned like an eternal eye above the world, the bone-white moon stared down.

She wrung her hands. Breathed. Just breathed.

Stepping towards the edge of the black earth, she stared out into the distance of this terribly beautiful place. Pyreflies sparkled and caught her eye, but none swirled or grew or pulsed. They hovered, formless and mindless, drifting in the silence of the world.

She closed her eyes. Thinking, she desperately focused on sandy hair and seagull-laughs, of oceans and salt and the sun. Of blitzball and The Great Sir Jecht, of Zanarkand's imaginary lights and the heat of her skin when she turned up and looked at him and laughed a real, real laugh. She thought of that hazy smile pressed against her lips, and the blue blue blue of Macalania spinning without control and the lazy sense of freedom unwinding her knotted heart. She thought of the sun.

She opened her eyes, and saw only the moon.

Nothing trembled but for the smile on her face, and still the pyreflies rose and fall without any sense of direction. A part of her felt sad. A part of her felt happy. Everything in her sensed only loss.

If he was not here, this dreamy boy who had sparked like lightning and changed all of their lives - then maybe... Maybe he was alive, somewhere. How he had seduced her by churning out his memories of Zanarkand, dreams that caught in his throat and she had believed him, just a tiny bit, because of the fantasies Sir Jecht put in her head when she was just a girl. So why couldn't she fall back on those fantasises now, and cling to the false hope that had been her strength for so long?

Because, she thought with shuddering eyes, Spira did not need any more lies.

She... Had to learn to let that dream go. She had to stop holding her breath for him. She had to stop writing him letters. Yet there he was, in the wind. There he was, in the sea. There he was, in the sky. He was everywhere she breathed because everywhere would not exist to her if he had not come. One thank you was not enough.

So she broke a smile, and said to the air, "I know... We spent a lot of time together." Tilting her head, she tried to stop herself either laughing or crying at how silly or sad this was, but carried on. "And I know that you can't hear me." The soft laughter came now. Pure. Hollow. "I know, I know that this is selfish. But I wish you were still here."

Swallowing, she shook her head. This wasn't what she wanted to say. This wasn't what she would have wanted him to hear - "I'm sorry" - this had nothing to do with her. And everything to do with him.

She sucked in breath. No, she wasn't ready to tell him about how long she could hold her breath for. No, she wasn't ready to tell him how Wakka and Lulu and Kimarhi and Rikku and everyone else was moving on and picking themselves up. No, she wasn't ready to tell him anything like that, not yet, not yet, because that would just show him how much he was missing. Maybe he could hear, and maybe, just maybe, he'd be a little too sad.

"Thank you."

She turned to walk away, and felt the hairs on her neck rise. She stopped. Her head shook so slightly, her eyes whirring with a sudden fear that rose like a hummingbird rattling its wings against her head. All she could hear was noise and all she could feel was ice ripple down her back. Her throat went dry and her mind was filled with ice and sharpness and claws and hurt, hurt, hurt.

She lifted her head and threw away her fear, turning and expecting to see nothing but a haze of blueblueblue.

And saw nothing but the moon, again.

Her heart slowed and the hummingbird fear pounded slower but deeper like Gagazet drums pounding in her mind. She stood on that black black earth and thought of Death and Pain and Suffering and the jumbled mess of angry eyes and staring eyes and eyes that seemed to know everything about her when she knew nothing about him.

Yet those eyes didn't come and nothing but a bone-white stone glared at her.

She pressed a hand to her heart, and lowered her head into a maze of hummingbird wingbeats whirrling and whirrling without control.

This meant... That he was not dead too.

She took a step back. She would not be afraid, she reminded, never afraid. So she thought of the sun on her skin, and left the farplane if only to put that hummingbird back into a box to pry open in the middle of the night.

The roots of Guadosalam towered over her, and she felt so achingly alone.


	3. Cicadas on Tinfoil

With death curling in her mind, she decided to go to Mushroom Rock Road.

Since... since the start of the calm, or perhaps long before it, she has never been sure of herself. She'd felt lost, delicate, unsure and unable to decide what would make her happy or what, after everything, she wanted to do.

It didn't seem fair... that she should turn to apathy after achieving perhaps one of the greatest victories Spira has ever seen (not that she thought of it that way, but she smiled politely whenever they'd tell her, anyway.) It didn't seem right that she would feel so uncomfortable in her little island hut, craving company but at the same time listlessly yearning for solitude. It just didn't fit that she should still be able to smile, or feel sad, or lonely, or desperate, or happy or any of those strange, mismatched, revolving emotions when she had planned on feeling nothing at all past seventeen.

Perhaps she was addicted to feeling. Perhaps she was addicted to danger. Perhaps she just wanted to feel alive again, rather than simply being alive. She... knew it was stupid, knew it was dangerous, and knew it was crazy and pointless and silly - but those same feelings had driven her to dive into the Farplane in the first place, so she had to ride them out.

She had come here because she knew death would follow her.

This place seeped of loneliness. Great gullies were carved out of the aging stone behind her, everything groaning and moving motionless towards the sea. Even the water here, in her mind, had been tainted black and red. The seaweed that breached the surface looked like floating corpses, somehow left forgotten after that terrible incident. Floating there, just to make her feel sad.

Her boots stayed firmly pressed in the sand. After that awful day, she had never wanted to come back here. But the drive was in her, and she had nothing left to do but follow it, anyway. If she closed her eyes for long enough, she could still breath in the blood and the dirt and the pyreflies. She could still remember her ankles twirling and the whole beach dancing round her, a sandstorm of flies glittering and glowing. The blood on her bare feet had been washed out in the body ridden sea. She would never forget, no matter how calm and serene this beach seemed now, she would never forget its turmoil.

Then why had she come here?

Because something in her heart drew her here. Something about this sea where Sin had once swam stole all of her attention. This was where she had learned her sacrifice would be worth it. This is where she now knew that... His sacrifice had been worth it.

Sometimes, she needed to be reminded of that, as selfish as it was.

And then she felt ice on her back.

A jolt suddenly ran through her skin. Her eye moved like a wheel, turning violently towards a flash of blue.

No...

She took a step back in surprise, a hand immediately on her chest and her head shaking in disbelief. No, no, no he couldn't be here. He shouldn't have been here. She had sent him - she had sent him and this was not happening.

Humming birds lashed against her mind, cicadas shaking their wings like rain on tinfoil. A well opened somewhere and her mind was the sea raging inconsistently and she pushed out with the last of her strength, "Seymour..."

He was smiling.

"Lady Yuna."

Had she not predicted, since the moment she saw nothing in the Farplane, that this would happen? Had she not come here because she knew what would be waiting here for her? Then why did she suddenly feel so naked beneath his gaze, why did she suddenly want nothing more but to runrunrun?

"... You should... be resting," she said, cautiously.

"Please, you wound me," came the soft, twittering response. He stepped forwards, full and elegant and the exact opposite of whatever twisted form his father had been when he had struggled out from the Farplane. "I am well rested."

"Why are you here?" Why, why, why was he here when... She found fists balling by her sides, more than ready to summon her staff if the time called for it. She refused to be afraid anymore. This was her stand. "How... How can you be here?"

"It seems," he said, "that I truly am my father's son." Tilting his head, he added, "Would you consider my death to be unclean?"

She struggled within herself for an answer, but she found new words instead, "You were wrong, you know." Courage roared in her, and the waves crashed. "Spira's suffering did not prevail. We broke the spiral of death. We defeated Sin." Narrowing her eyes, she lifted her head, hands freely falling by her sides, "What will you do, in a world without Sin?"

"Ah, the Eternal Calm," he said, her courage washing off him like the rocks in the sea. "A world free of suffering. A world free of death. Is this what you have brought, Lady Yuna?"

"I never... set out, to free the world of suffering."

"Then, in a world without sin, that shall become my task."

She shook her head free of hummingbirds, Gagazet's drums beating loud and clear. "I did not set out to free the world of suffering. I set out to... give relief, from the pointless cruelty of Sin. I set out to give a sense of security, a moment of peace in a world swallowed by chaos. I will never free the world of death, or pain, or sorrow - but I have given the people choice. The choice to shape their own lives, to choose to live honestly. No longer is Spira blinded by false hope, and we have given them, that."

"It seems your resolve was even greater than I had imagined," she was sure he laughed, then, but the wind howled louder and the whipping of her hair and the scream of the ocean drowned everything out. "- A world without false hope?" She lifted her arms, crossing them to cover the goosebumps that rippled across her skin. At least now, she could attribute it to the elements - rather than those deep blue eyes that seemed to rip right through her. "Lady Yuna, you cannot be so naive."

"Do you think, that without Sin, without Yevon - there will be no more lies? Corruption is not born from desperation, Yuna. Long after the cheering and the celebration, long after those heart felt smiles and laughs have all peeled away, sorrow will prevail again. Your hope, your ambition, and your resolve - all of them... are admirable qualities, but ones that I fear will be crushed."

She lowered her head, her fingers lacing across her waist. She wasn't sure, exactly, what emotions boiled and burned and churned in her stomach - but every single one wanted her to vomit. "I still don't understand you," she said, lifting her eyes to meet with his, refusing to back down against his torrent of words. "Life... is punctuated by moments of extreme happiness... and extreme sorrow," her eyes darted to the side, the sun catching lightly in them. "But through both the good, and the bad, we can... work to find peace. Spira is smarter, now. It has learned from the mistakes of the past - and because of that, it can grow. I will not be crushed. I will not let you crush me! I will not let you crush them!"

"Then, what will you do with me?" The smirk on his face grew ever-the-wider, never once changing. "Punish me? Break me? Send me again and again?"

"I will stop you," she said, briskly. "Your father... and your mother, they asked me to stop you. They begged me to put an end to you, and they blamed themselves, for letting you become as twisted as you did."

Suddenly, he didn't seem to be smiling, anymore. Something, just for a second, seemed to come loose and break. His eyes seemed wider, his mouth a lose for words - but she wasn't entirely sure if she was simply hoping for a break, a chip, a crack in a face made of porcelain that seemed like it would never, ever split.

"They need not blame themselves," he spoke, trying to remain the mirror of calmness. "Do you not think it selfish, that they would take the blame for all of my achievements? My Lady, I am no longer a child. I am free to fail, or triumph, on my own. "

And he was right. He was no longer a child, weeping in Zanarkand while the whole world remained ignorant to his wailing. He was no longer that little boy who had begged his mother not to leave him, no. He was lips of ice, and kisses that tasted of burning ash, he was vicious and deluded, deranged and lost. He was no longer a child, but he was a man with a child's heart. She wondered, for just a moment, what it must have been like to wander down Gagazet alone. Did he weep, then? Or had his eyes grown tired and his heart numb, even then?

"I will save you."

"A bold statement."

"If you will not stop. If you will not die, then I will stop you. I will save you," she breathed, long thin and hard. If she had her guardians, she would have fought - if she had her aeons by her side, she would have fought. But she did not have the strength, and all she could do was speak in half-lies.

"And how," he said with a flicker of bemusement crossing his face, stepping across the sands towards her, "do you plan on doing that?"

"... Come with me," she said, aware that she needed to buy time. So long as he followed her and chased her for whatever reason he saw fit, then that meant that he would not be harming anyone else. If she could do this, eventually her guardians would come looking for her. Eventually, they would find her. She could handle herself, until that time. "To Guadosalam."

"Lady Yuna, you are as cunning as you are admirable," he closed his eyes over, apparently mulling over the idea - but when he opened them, and saw her hand extended - extended as he had done for her so many times, he could not bring himself to reject it.

"I do not know what you are planning," he mused; but did not reach for her hand, knowing it would bring her discomfort. Offering a bow of his head instead, he made his way towards her side.

"But I will follow you, wherever you might take me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you if you have managed to read thus far, I really do appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Any comments, critique, or questions about the direction of this fic are very much encouraged! Thank you once again. C:


	4. The Dying Miles

It was strange.

They had been walking side by side, each keeping their distance from one another, and yet neither let their eyes wander terribly far. He was reminded of the invisible bubbles children so often made, the pressure between their hands both binding them together, and pushing them apart.

He found her silence intriguing. Frustrating, but intriguing. Would their conversation forever be drowned in vicious half-arguments? Would they communicate through glances of the eye, partings of the lip, never quite sure what they read in one another's faces? Would they really let whatever they had crumble away to this, and this alone? That would be such a piteous waste.

Still, he found it wrong that he would be the one to make conversation. What had he to say? Sin was gone. Life had found a new futile vein of hope, and it would not be long until the blood from that was sucked dry. What then, would Lady Yuna do?  
He caught the blue and green flicker to the ground. Tall, thin shapes formed - stretched by the puppet strings of the dying sun. Walking like mimes on stilts, hand in hand.

Hand in hand.

What a lovely thought.

"Why," he finally cracked the silence, "Would you take me like a child back to his home? Lady Yuna, surely you don't think I would get lost...?"

There was a flicker on her face, like a sudden need to explain herself bubbling up to her lips. But she shook her head, and tried to hold the silence with the pick of her tongue, "There is something you need to see."

And that was all they said, until the road to Djose opened up a fork before them. Soon, the sound of the crashing waves would be nothing but a distant memory - but he had a feeling they would ghost a while longer in her mind. At the very least, they seemed to stay behind her wheel-like eyes.

"Do you need rest, Lady Yuna? By the time we reach the moonflow, it may be too late to cross by Shoopuf."

"No." Curt of her. He smirked. "If it is too late, then we will find another way. I know... it is long, but we will walk. I will be fine."

"If it is what you want, then so be it."

The ghosts filled their lips again, and so he breathed the chill in, and walked while she shivered. Perhaps it was for the best. It was entirely possible that she would run out during the night and leave a half-ghost for the priests to deal with. Ah, but of course, she would be the one in fear of his departure. He had to remind himself, that she was the one who held the strings, this time.

Again, what a lovely thought.

"This road has existed for well over a thousand years. Djose temple is one of the oldest temples in all of Spira."

There was something that tightened in her lip. She lifted her head, blowing dust out of her throat. "... I... would have thought it would have been Zanarkand."

"There was faith before Yevon, just as there will be faith long after it has faded," he nodded his head, and turned and cast his eyes out for the skies. "Does this worry you?"

"Not at all," she said, as calmly as her teeth would allow. He avoided her face, letting her thoughts wind and grow and pulse in the jungle. "Faith can bring someone... strength, when they have nothing else. It is something that can endure all things, something that is so strong on its own. Faith, true faith, can be a wonderful thing. And, I know it can be corrupted, but that doesn't make it worthless."

The sky was leaking the last of its heat into the earth. He pondered on the blackness that sheathed the horizon. "If it is all enduring... has your faith decayed?"

"It has been destroyed, but," closing her eyes over, she drifted. "I had... placed my faith blindly. I did not choose my faith, it was given to me. And... though I found... so much comfort in it, it was, in the end, not enough. But it had been misplaced."

"Misplaced?"

"Yes," she looked up to him, and the sun died as he gazed at green and blue. "My faith belonged not with Yevon, not with my father, but with the people."

Something stirred.

"The people?"

There was a movement of her hands, his eyes crossed over her chest. "Yes. My friends, my guardians - I lived, and would have died for them. The people... they are the ones who can carry our hope. They have the potential to change, and choose to live a better life. The dead and the church couldn't do that."

"So you think the dead incapable of change?"

A nerve had been struck. A silence burst over them. He thought vaguely of running his hands against the rock and grassy walls, nails to grind to chalk as the wind whispered by the passing grasses. Did the ocean fill her mind again? He would ensure it would roar ever louder.

"... It is alright. It is the living, too, that are incapable of changing. You are strong, Lady Yuna, and great change you did bring - but it will be wasted in the face of your faith. Yevon will rise by a new name, corruption will sow the same seeds and hatred will be ever present. Even without Sin, there will be no hope for them. Soon, despair will eat them whole again, and they will wonder why Sin's disappearance did not rid them of all their problems."

"Seymour..." She swallowed, "Do you have no hope for them, at all?"

"If I am honest, Yuna, I have never understood false hope," was this a weakness too great to give? An admission of ignorance, a damaged part of him that could never function? He had spent too many years clinging to stone and weeping for the past to believe wishing with every grinding muscle would ever work.

Woods tangled up the shadows that held hands.

She rolled her shoulders, and with it, rolled out a sigh. "Not all hope is false. Not all smiles are fake. Now, no one needs to pretend to smile. Now, people can finally be... sad, over the little things. They can cry, instead of laughing, if they need to. And it's okay, to be sad. It's okay to be happy, too. They can live, that is all that matters. They can live. And they can change, and learn, and grow. Things will get better. We have to believe that things will get better, and now, without Sin, without Yevon, things really can get better."

He wondered if this was her attempt to understand. His soul was most definitely unsoftened. "Your devotion is as enduring as my doubts."

The stillness in their conversation that followed was only punctuated by the clangor of a Hypello's tongue as he somehow failed to recognize perhaps one of the most hated men in all of Spira. Something, he supposed, he should have been grateful for. After a few slurred s's and the usual exchange of gil, the very last Shoopuf of the night began it's faithful journey across the darkened moonflow.

She looked towards the stars, and he was comfortable with the blue-green agates that softened before him.

No matter how deeply he seemed to sink his fangs into her heart, the venom never seemed to have any true effect. If anything, she grew stronger, not weaker, because of it. He reasoned that he made her tough. Would she ever learn, however? Would she ever learn that not everyone could be saved?

The water slooshed as the Shoopuf began to make its move. Pyreflies choked the air and stained his nostrils as the sunset sky faded out into dull blues and blacks. Her beads clacked every now and then as her fingers stroked and adjusted and played with her her hair, and he sometimes noticed the hollow thuds of his boots on the wooded floor.

"You could sleep," he suggested, trying to fill a role he could never have again.

She did not respond.

"Guadosalam is all but an hour away. Should I be excited?"

Silence.

"Do you think our marriage has been annulled?"

This time, she choked.

"I... I wouldn't know."

"Ours is a unique circumstance. It is rare for an unsent to be married, rarer still to have that marriage found invalid. Both of us were... willing partners, even if we had no true meeting of minds," he narrowed his eyes, forging a smirk as her fingers squirmed in her lap. "Yet, I wouldn't know. I imagine Yevon struggles to exist, now."

"Yes," she nodded. "Yevon is no more... There is talk of a New Yevon, however. I am sure... someone in Bevelle would be able to answer your question."

"If it is anything like the courts of Yevon, then I am sure the law would fall silent to whatever the High Summoner would want. Would you consider that... unjust?"

Complex questions, battles with her will and with her mind, always seemed to cause her to just freeze up and fight. With anyone else, perhaps she would have spoken with morals and rational, perhaps she would have pretended that it was, indeed, unjust and she should just shy away and request a divorce - but her face sharpened, her eyes flared, and with fists curled by her sides, she spoke her heart. "Our marriage was unjust, and the courts that sanctioned it were corrupt... I would fight to have our bond annulled... I will not stand by and let it hang over me. I will fight injustice, even if an exception is taken for me, and I will fight for anyone else who was wed against their will, if that is what must be done."

"You did come willing," he spoke softly.

She whirred. "I would have... wanted, to have married for love. Or for Spira. Or for peace. I offered myself up to stop the slaughter in Home. I offered myself up to stop you. It was not my will to marry you, it was my will to put an end to us."

"All the same, the act was done. You consented."

"On the basis that my guardians would be kept safe. You lied to me, Seymour," she shook her head.

"As you had lied to me. Please, do not mistake that as a fault. I was impressed."

How was she to ever argue against that? She shrunk, lips pursing tight and hard together. He decided to try and make her smile.

"If the courts would not annul it, even for you, then I would ask for a divorce."

It was not quite a smile, but unravelled and shocked curves of her lips were just as rewarding. "But, why?"

He allowed a tilt of his head, a slow, wan smile forming. "Is it not what you want?"

He wondered if she was thinking of Valefor now, and the hard leather wings that had stretched a canvas around her. "Of course... of course it is." She struggled, and finally gave, "Thank you."

There was a raise of his brows and a nod. His word was sealed.

It was only when they reached Guadosalam that she spoke again.

The woods rose up behind her, and there was a tightening in her chest as she lowered her head.

Lifting it again, she said as firmly as she possibly could, "Guadosalam has been abandoned. Your people have run away and want to die. It's because of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> / Sorry this one took so long! This is perhaps a real test of my dialogue, since they actually finally have a proper conversation together - and is by extent a test of how well I know the characters. Please, if anything seems off, do critique me! All reviews, praise or critique, are very much appreciated. Cheers! /


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